Children play on the beach, beside a fallen trunk of a coconut tree whose roots had been exposed by sea erosion of the land, on the shoreline of Han Island, Carterets Atoll, Papua New Guinea.

It all began in November 2005 when I read an article concerning rising sea levels and their effect on the low level, one metre high, coastline of the islands that make up the Carteret Atoll in the South Pacific. It sounded newsworthy, topical and tropical. Even though I knew little of how to get there I was interested in going, I’d been to Kiribati atoll on assignment a few months earlier and I wanted another Southern Pacific adventure.

Children from Iolasa Island walking on a shallow sand bank, with Huene Island (which was split into two in the 1970

Almost exactly one year later, with the story gaining momentum amidst talk of an impending relocation of the Carteret islanders, I had persuaded two of my regular clients to give me the go ahead to book flight tickets and make the journey, from my Tokyo home, to Cairns Australia, where I transferred up to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, and then from there flying to Buka island in the autonomous region of Bougainville. That was all to prove to be the easy bit.

I would be travelling with colleagues; a journalist, a videographer and a logistician for help and security. We all met up in Buka township, in a half-star hotel with a five star view of the Buka sea passage. We were on a fairly tight schedule and wished to visit the atoll as soon as possible. The usual vessels for making the four hour crossing were 22 foot long, open, single engined 40hp “banana boats”, but the wind had been blowing for two weeks straight, keeping those vessels in the sandy cove port. Even if the winds were to calm we were stuck- there was no fuel on the island. This was an outpost of Papua New Guinea and we were now on “island time”.

As we waited for a rumoured delivery of fuel to arrive on the island, “perhaps today”, “maybe tomorrow”, “I think it came already”, we sat on our hotel decking debating how we could reach the atoll safely. Was it prudent to risk our lives across 4 hours and 80km of open ocean in a banana boat? We knew boats making this crossing occasionally disappeared and we were nervous, and not only for our equipment. But then on another blistering sunny morning luck crossed our paths, the fuel arrived on the island and the hotel jeep driver, Ron, mentioned matter of factly “in the hotel there are two people with a small fishing boat, they could take you”.

Suddenly it all seemed too easy as we negotiated a quite expensive charter fee with our boat captain (but what price was too high for personal safety, air conditioning, a shower and electricity to recharge camera batteries?). We were trying to visit six islands where there is no electricity, no shops, no food to buy and no hotels. The people of the Carterets are suffering, their island coastlines are disappearing, the atoll is over-populated, their “gardens” regularly flooded with sea water causing the frequent destruction of their meagre swamp taro and banana crops. Their only food source is now coconuts and fish, rumours floated of malnutrition and rampant malarial disease. On the morning of our departure we went shopping, for our own provisions, but also for supplies to give the islanders, to trade for fish and for possible shelter on the atoll.

Islanders rebuild a sea wall made of giant clam shells, to try and halt erosion of land by the waves, on Han Island, Carteret Atoll.

Two hours before our departure our all too easy plan almost came to an all too quick end. A local politician whom we had interviewed objected to our fishing boat leaving port, we were grounded, caught in the middle of a local political squabble. Two meetings and a few phone calls later a fax arrived from a governmental official in Port Moresby granting us permission to depart. We sailed overnight on our fishing vessel, a motley crew consisting of ourselves, the captain, his wife, his one year old daughter, a deckhand, and a quiet spoken Catholic Priest who would “show us the channels through the reef, and possibly save our souls should it all go wrong”.

Catholic Priest Father Boniface Besco points the way, guiding a boat through the reef, towards Han Island, Carteret Atoll, Papua New Guinea.

For the next few days we anchored in the aqua coloured Tulun lagoon, and explored the Carteret islands first discovered by British navigator Philip Carteret in 1767. Covered in mosquito repellent and Factor80 sun block, I criss-crossed the lagoon, photographing on beaches eroded by the relentless sea, trying to figure out how to expose for the sun blackened skin of the islanders against the sun bleached sand.

I would shoot and listen as the islanders told me “tides are changing, and the weather is different”, “the beach used to go out to there”, “the water came up to our waist”. These islands all form one atoll, but each had their own individual character, and their own stories to tell. On Puil island I was shown the crop gardens, now a barren wasteland after tidal waters had rampaged through.

On Huene Island (population “about 20”) I listened as Selina Netoi told me “we live in fear. Maybe the next storm will take our little houses, and our children and wash us all away”. Selina has reason to be afraid, her island split in two in the 1970’s, eroded through the middle by the sea. Now the beaches near her shack house are littered with the stumps of fallen coconut trees, their roots exposed by the waves. “We have little to eat, and no one comes to buy our sea produce” she told me, shrugging her shoulders, watched by the rest of her quiet and shy family, unused to white skinned visitors, and to visitors in general.

Many islanders hope that a much talked about, but little acted upon, governmental plan to relocate them to the larger island of Bougainville will happen soon, but the future of the Carterets is uncertain. As I prepared to depart the island Bernard Tubin told me “We live our life happily, but because of this rushing of the sea and the current of the waves is so strong, and we know people have been talking about this green gas emission, we feel that our life is threatened and we don’t know what is coming next.”

The people of Carterets are by no means savage islanders living on a desert island, instead they are people with very few options trying to live the only life they know on a tiny remote atoll inhabited for previous centuries by their ancestors. They are third world islanders living with the actuality of rising sea levels, feeling the hotly debated effects of first world consumption. And now they’re in danger of becoming the world’s first environmental refugees.

UPDATE: Now in July 2009 as I write this, two and half years on since I first visited the Carterets, the world’s media has also been there. From ABC news, through to the Royal Geographic Society, through to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, a steady path has been trodden, and still the Carteret islanders are living there, watching the waves, waiting for the world to notice, and to help. Only five families have relocated off of the atoll, the menfolk moving first to build rudimentary homes on Bougainville island for their women and children, who then joined them later. The Carteret islanders have grown tired of the media visits with no real change in their status, the elders of the islands now wish to charge media for access, money which they hope to use to help those still on the islands.

A child runs on the beach on Iolasa island, beside the trunks of fallen coconut palm trees, their roots exposed by the sea erosion of the land, with the two Huene Islands (Huene was split in two by the sea in the 1970